Waiting for Someone
by How Clever of You
Summary: Tuesday night finds Greg sitting in the briefing room, case files spread out in front of him. / Can't write too much without giving it all away, but possible tissue advisory. Massively angsty. Spoilers up to Day Game.


Tuesday night finds Greg sitting in the briefing room, case files spread out in front of him. The Toronto skyline twinkles behind him, the light catching on the windows. He's sure it's beautiful outside, a nice, cool night to stave off the raging heat of the day. The moon is almost gone, half a crescent, fading into the night like the events of that afternoon. He runs a hand across the manila envelope for the City Museum case, grievously dubbed _37 Minutes_ by the members of his team. He laughs to himself, bitterly, and is astonished by how much time has passed, how much has happened since then.

_Ed is shouting orders, fast fast fast; Sam scales the edge of the roof with the ease of being so young, and Greg just watches them, measuring the words in his mind and in his mouth. _

Roy had been on this case. Or so he liked to tell people. It was almost a shame, how he could be so careless – his partner, his best friend, shot and killed, right in front of him. They had broken protocol, responded to a hot call that they had no right going to. It makes him wonder how close his own team had been. Spike had gone off book, doing everything he could, but was unsuccessful. But what if he had recruited the rest of them, had swayed Jules or Wordy (arguably the most emotionally affected in their little family) into helping him? How close had Greg really been to losing them both?

_Jules has her binoculars pressed to her eyes, watching with the same intensity that he'd taught her to encompass; she's a good officer, and he's so, so proud._

Then there was Naismith and his mistake, falling in love with Leila and getting in the way of a takedown. He let his heart get involved, something Greg had sworn he would never do. It was hard, though, sometimes, when he made that connection. Instead of seeing just a person, like they trained you for, there was a name and a story and a family behind that face, whether it was scared or determined or just outright hateful. They took down the man with the gun, the woman with the knife, the kid with the bomb, but it wasn't always just that, in black and white. When you're negotiating, seeing the psyche behind that mask, it's hard not to think about who they are. Did they drop their kid off at school that morning? What's going to happen to their apartment when they don't go home? Does this person have a friend, someone to drink with after a hard day's work? It was almost too easy, sometimes, to replace the faces with those of his team – Ed, in a mad struggle to keep custody of his children; Spike, fighting against the terrors that someone, somewhere, had inflicted upon him; Jules, trying to keep pace with a world that was passing her by; Sam, seeking to avenge the death of someone he loved so dearly.

_Spike emerges from the Command Truck and just stares up at them in disbelief, and Greg closes his eyes to block out the terror, horror, pain that's marking his face, because he had put it there and he wasn't about to erase it._

His fingers slip across the setup, the day Daniel Rangford fell apart. Spike, Jules, and Lew had been across town, evacuating the area, while the rest of them were at the HQ, trying to talk down an old friend. The raw pain in Ed's face was enough to stop him dead in his tracks, just for an instant. A mentor, a friend, someone he had trusted. Greg, he's all of those things to Ed. They've been together every step of the way. Everything either of them had ever gone through in the SRU, the other was there to lend an ear, a shoulder, a hand up. There's nobody Greg trusts more, and he hopes Ed feels the same. Wishes he did.

Lewis walks into the room and takes a seat across from the Sarge. He taps his fingers against the table and pulls a file toward him, flipping through it. He passes by a picture of Sara Kominski, a brief rundown of her and her past. Rafer Alston's face smiles up at him, next, from a personal photo, one they'd nabbed from his partner's parents after her arrest. A description of the land mine is printed in bold, including a handwritten note: _the hole was glued. _He glances through the report, smiling at the irony of the case he'd picked at random. He pushes it away and leans back in the chair, arms folded across his chest.

"Wasn't very heroic," he comments. Greg doesn't want even want to look at him, see the disappointment where there had once been admiration. But some unseen force – guilt, curiosity, maybe even God himself – pulls his gaze up and he's looking at someone he hadn't seen for a very long time.

"I can't say the same about you," he replies. It's more the truth than him trying to change the subject, but Lew catches on. He looks at him with those wise-beyond-my-years eyes and shakes his head.

"I never took you for a coward." It's not a biting remark or a jab; there's no venom behind the words. It's just the honest to God truth, and Greg has no choice but to agree. Years ago, he'd been strong. Happy. He'd had his feet planted on the ground and a family to go home to. Things got bad, though, and he took the easy way out – he hid it. He took to the bottle just as he'd promised himself he'd never do. His father, his superiors at work, and, later, Daniel Rangford – influences had led him to Just Say No. Ed had taken on that stance, too, especially after Greg had gotten back up after the fall he never thought he would recover from. You need to feel it all. Every last singeing bit of guilt and grief and complete hatred, whether it was for yourself or everyone around you. Every emotion counted, because it meant your heart was still beating, that you were still someone capable of _feeling_.

"I couldn't do it anymore," he whispers. He looks down at all the files around him, all the names. Hostages he'd saved; people he hadn't. Gil Collins cracking his head on the ice; Goran Tomasiac and a bullet wound; George Orston and his desperate sacrifice. The defeats were few and far between, but they were always the hardest blows. Dealing with the aftermath of watching a man, innocent, driven to insanity, die in a battle for what he needed the most, be it the need to avenge a father's death; the want to hold a son, no longer yours, just one more time; or the calling to save the people who loved you, respected you, looked up to you the most. It never got easier.

"You had a whole team relying on you." Lew closes his eyes and rubs his temple with one hand; Greg has to look away. He watches the cars pass by below, wondering if he knows any of them. He counts them as they cross his vision, trying to drown out the heavy silence. He gets to thirty-two before it's broken. "How could you just leave them like that? They have to suffer through this, Boss. Watching you stand up there on that ledge. The false hope that goes with the faltering and the second thoughts. And then standing there as your body drops three stories down from the force of that bullet in your brain and you hit the concrete below."

Greg drops his head down between his knees and squeezes his eyes shut. The guilt is already suffocating; Lew's disapproval, the anger from his voice – it's making it even worse.

"I didn't have a choice. You didn't even think about that, did you? You could have lived in honor me, Greg, but you decided to just give up. You might have said goodbye before you jumped, but that doesn't make it honorable." Lew stands up and approaches the window, staring out at the city before him. "Think of Dean."

Oliver MacCoy enters the room and drops a newspaper down on the table in front of Greg. They look at each other for a moment, and he can see it in Mac's eyes, too. _You had a chance to live. _Greg remembers what a great guy Mac had been, how he'd trained one of his best officers to be as good as he was. He was a nice guy, calling in recommendations and just raving about this skinny Italian kid who had a heart of gold and a need to do good in the world, beyond the calling of wearing blue. He wanted to make a connection.

Mac backs out of the room and disappears down the hall before Greg can apologize.

Lew stays silent at the window, cooling off. His breaths are deep and slow, almost a lullaby. There's something else to it, though, as if the oxygen isn't exactly circulating through his lungs. Sarge reminds himself, almost bitterly, that there's no need for that anymore.

He picks up the paper Mac had left him, just to focus on something other than Lewis. It's a last minute spread, a mayor's announcement torn out and his own picture reprinted. It circulated around the city. It had made front-page headline, the story of the SRU Officer – more than that, the _Sergeant –_ who took his own life. _Was it too much for him_? the writer questioned. _After more than a decade on the force, he should have learned to deal with his emotions._

The rest of his team, his family, had declined to comment. He could imagine them all, though, torn up. Jules had lost the main father figure in her life; Ed had lost a friend; Raf and Sam had both lost a mentor; and Spike. It was almost too painful to bear, thinking about him. Lew, Mac, and his father had all been ripped away by death, and he had just added salt to that wound.

_No judgment, though_, the article ensured. _Sometimes life just gets the best of us._

"I couldn't lie anymore." He rubs his hands over his face, suddenly exhausted. His head aches from hitting the pavement, and a little bit of blood slips down his neck. "They all put their trust in me and I just threw it back in their face. I was tired of lying. I _am _tired of lying. I wanted our team to be built on something other than my own mistakes."

"Why now?" Lewis asks. "Why did you decide to do it now? Is it because you got caught?"

"I don't know," he said truthfully. "I guess I couldn't go in every day and see that betrayal in their faces."

"If you had worked at it, they would have forgiven you. No doubt in my mind." Lew puts his hands in his pockets and turns around, leaning back against the glass. A strobe light flashes across the building and, for an instant, there's almost an angelic quality about him. It passes, though, and then he's just standing there, looking so much older. Tired, as if being dead has more of a strain on the body than being alive. "Spike tried to help."

"I didn't die because I lost my job." Greg stands up, too, and joins Lewis at the window. He stares out and watches a helicopter buzzing in the distance. It lands, going down, down, down, until it disappers behind a building. "I died because I lost my family."

"Dean just came back," he replies without hesitation, as if he knew the script already. "'You pushed him away before you could do it by accident."

Greg exhales sharply, but there are still pinpricks behind his eyes. He moves his gaze to the ceiling, trying to stop the tears from starting. "I couldn't live with his disappointment, either. Not this time."

"Too late."

"I know."

Greg leans against the window, his forehead on the pane, and tries to calm himself down. He might be the ghost, but thoughts of his team – all in various states of grieving – invade his mind. Dean getting that call; maybe even seeing it on the news before someone bothered to tell him personally. He'd never have a chance to get to know his father. He would revert back to those memories of Before, back when he hid in his bedroom while Greg sat in the kitchen, alone except for a bottle. He would go back to hating his dad for abandoning him. Not once, but twice. This time for good.

He cries quietly, the tears unnaturally hot against his face. Lew just stands beside him, offering no consolation. He doesn't deserve it, anyway. If there was a hell, in fact, he should be there instead. Not here, in a twisted remake of the headquarters, his home. It's the same, both in structure and in feel. But there's something different, something wrong. The spirit of his team is gone.

Lew moves away and sits down at the table. Greg turns, the tears seeming to evaporate, and is surprised to see they're no longer alone.

There's a little, barefoot girl sitting at the far end of the table. She's playing with little army men and there's no doubt in his mind who she is. Dominic Scarlatti is watching her play with the gaze of a father, silently fascinated by her youth. Mac has reentered the room and is sitting close to Spike's father, as if they had made peace with each other and the one-sided fight to be his role model. There's a boy in his army greens, feet propped on the table, hands behind his head. He looks peaceful. Last, next to Lew, is a beautiful brunette woman, the years leaving wrinkles across her face. There's something maternal about her; Greg doesn't know how he knows, but it's almost a fact in his mind: she had died in childbirth.

She looks so much like her daughter that Greg almost calls out her name. _Julianna._

"We're all waiting for someone," Lewis explains quietly. "But just because we're waiting doesn't mean to have to hurry."


End file.
